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Ownership of money and the induction of value to money.
Lack of uniform rules in statutory and constitutional systems.
Additional proposals for the Treaty of Maastricht.
By Prof. Giacinto Auriti
UNIVERSITÀ DI TERAMO
FACOLTÀ DI GIURISPRUDENZA
Wed., 29 May 1996
1) Preliminary considerations.
What is most surprising not only for a jurist, but more so for the ordinary reader of legislative texts, is to discover that there are no considerations about who is the owner of the money, at the act of issue, to be found in any legal ordinance.
The Treaty of Maastricht is no exception to this rule.
If we do not establish who is the owner of money, with respect to the original title of ownership at the act of issue, we cannot distinguish between debtor and creditor, which illustrates the gravity of a legislative deficiency that can no longer be tolerated. This serious deficiency in the legislative framework surrounding the monetary system has arisen from the fact that there is no scientific definition of the concept of money, itself, and thus it has not been possible to consider it as a real good and an object of the law of ownership.
These are the reasons why money is now considered as an "irrecoverable debt" or a spurious bill of exchange; for example "£ 1000 payable at sight to the bearer. Signed: the Governor of the Bank of Italy".
2) The induced value as a legal value.
For these reasons, it is useful to briefly summarize the new theory of the monetary "induced value", which has recently been developed in the University of Teramo (G.Auriti, "Il valore del diritto" and "L'ordinamento internazionale del sistema monetario" ed. Edigrafitel, Teramo, 1993).
In the light of this theory, it is evident that money is a question of law and, as such, its production is only limited by the decisions of the sovereign fiscal authority, entailing no other cost than that of the symbols (which merely constitute the formal elements of such legal matters). In order to explain the nature and characteristic aspects of legal induction, we need to consider some essential premises of a general, theoretical nature:
a) The law is an instrument because it is the result of a creative activity of the human spirit.
b) Since an instrument is an object of value, we cannot define the law, if we do not first of all define value.
c) Value is a relationship between phases of time. Therefore, I can say, for example, that a pen has value because I anticipate writing with it. Value is a relationship between the moment of anticipation and the anticipated moment.
d) In the first phase, value is the judgement of instrumentality, which concerns the object; in the second phase, it is the moment of satisfaction which concerns the subject. Therefore, the spiritual reality of the law, in which its instrumentality resides, is a relationship between phases of time. Thus for example, credit is the relationship between the "recalled" moment of establishing the contract and the anticipated moment of its fulfilment. In this way, we can state that law is a necessary and functional relationship between phases of time, which constitutes by virtue of its force of obligation a "must" or "shall be".
e) From these preliminary considerations, it emerges that because it satisfies a need for legal certainty, the law possesses a value in itself, which is separate from that of the item which is an object of the law. Therefore, if we consider two mutual actions of donation between two subjects, we have, retrospectively, the equivalent of an exchange contract. But, if the two parties establish a contract instead of two actions of donation, it means that if either one of them performs his service, there is a reason for a legal certainty of the other person's service. So, in the conventional element of the contract, there is a benefit or advantage and, hence, an autonomous value, which is separate from the value of the mutually exchanged services. The difference between "credit value" and "conventional value" becomes clear at this point: the credit value is measured by the value of the object of credit, while the conventional value is created by the convention itself, and its entity and structure are freely conceived and made by the agreement among parties. In this way, a value is created whose sole cost is the mental activity of the parties and the material element, which is necessary for its formal manifestation.
3) Money as a question of law.
Only in the light of these preliminary considerations is it possible to give a scientific definition of money, filling a conceptual void which can no longer be tolerated. Money has value because it measures value. Every unit of measure is determined by the corresponding quality of what it measures. If the metre is characterized by the quality of length, because it measures length, money necessarily has the quality of value, because it measures value. In this particular instance, conventional activity produces not only the measure of value, but also the "value of the measure," i.e. what we call "purchasing power".
In the case of money, we observe a phenomenon which is similar to that of physical induction. In an electrical dynamo, mechanical energy produces electrical energy.
Similarly for money, convention causes the induced value in the symbol. In the case of a dynamo, an increase in the rotational speed of the generating components causes an increase in the quantity of electric energy. Likewise, in the case of money, an increase in the velocity of circulation causes an increase in the induced value, i.e. in the purchasing power.
Money is, therefore, a collective good, because it is created by a social convention, but it is also an item of individual private property because with respect the original title of ownership, it is attributed to the bearer of the symbol by "legal induction".
The obstacle which has invariably confounded economists has arisen from the initial error of not defining money as a question of law and the law, itself, as an instrument and a good in itself, that is, an expression of value in itself, separate from the value of the good, which is an object of the law. On the basis of this initial misunderstanding, it has been attempted to explain monetary value with reference to gold reserves, producing confusion and, incorrectly, substituting the "credit value" for the "induced value", i.e. considering money not as a measure of value and, consequently, the value of the measure (which it is), but as an instrument of credit, representing the reserve. Money is not credit, but by legal induction it is a real good, an asset, and as such can also be an object of credit.
After all, if it were true that the reserve could give money its purchasing power, then the dollar should have lost its value completely, after the end of the Bretton Woods agreement and the abolition of the golden reserve. But the dollar has not lost its value, and has even taken the place of gold as the basic monetary unit of the global, monetary system.
The argument which tries to justify the monetary value in terms of the reserve is seriously flawed because it is based on a materialistic concept of value. Value, as we have explained above, can never be considered as a property of the material, but as a temporal relationship because it always consists of a forecast or anticipation. If a pen has value because we anticipate writing, money, too, has value because we anticipate purchasing. Usually the value of gold is considered as a characteristic of the metal and, consequently, has given rise to the erroneous concept of its "intrinsic value". But like everything else, gold has value because it has been agreed that it shall have it. Since the metal has been traditionally regarded as a monetary symbol, an induced value has been attributed to it by custom.
Since convention is a legal matter, and every unit of measure is established by convention, the raw material to create money is the same material used to define all other legal matters, i.e.: "space and time": in this context, the spatial dimension is the material, with which the monetary symbol appears and the temporal dimension is the anticipation of the possibility to purchase.
Consequently, the formal element of the "legal matter" in the case of money can be gold or any other symbol which involves negligible cost, like paper and ink. Nussbaum has shown that the value of goods, which represent the monetary symbol, is irrelevant (Arthur Nussbaum, Storia del dollaro, Milano, 1957, p.8). Analyzing the monetary history of the American Colonies, he shows that when goods were accepted as money, two phenomena were observed: their value appreciated and goods of inferior quality became as valuable as goods of superior quality. This was observed, for example, in the case of beaver furs.
Therefore, taking on an induced value, goods, as a monetary symbol, played the role of a mere formal element of a legal matter. In order to explain the validity of this thesis, we may consider that it makes no difference to us whether we have got old, or brand-new, banknotes in our pockets. This proves that gold is also nothing more than a legal matter, and its so-called "intrinsic value" is really the "induced value". The definitive proof of this is that if I buy a pound of gold, paying two hundred thousand lire, I give in exchange for the golden symbol two pieces of paper, whose commodity value is a minute fraction of the value of the gold which I have purchased.
By defining the value of money as a legal value, it is as if we had made the discovery of a gold-mine, which can be exploited without cost. "To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads, because there are no kilometres."
Ezra Pound was right !
4) Credit value and monetary value: distinguishing characteristics.
It is now time to clear up the misunderstanding caused by erroneously equating monetary value with credit value. In order to understand the great difference between money and credit, it is sufficient to consider the following points:
a) Credit is extinguished by a payment; money continues to circulate, after every transaction, because it is an item of continuous utility like every unit of measure.
b) Credit value is exposed to the risk of non-fulfilment; the monetary value is real and certain because, due to legal induction, money is a real good and, moreover, an item of continuous utility.
c) In the case of credit, the normative precept is required first and is followed by its manifestation. In the case of money, the formal manifestation of monetary symbols is first created and these symbols are then given value during the act of issue. The one who gives money its value is not the one who issues it, but the one who accepts it. In the case of physical induction, electric energy is generated by the rotation of the dynamo's components. Similarly in the case of legal induction, monetary value is created during the act of issue, that is to say at the dynamic moment when it enters circulation among the members of the community who give it conventional value by accepting it. The issue of symbols in the form of legal tender is an act of "heteronomy"; the acceptance of money which conventionally determines the value is an act of "autonomy". To say that the value of money is not created by the one who accepts it but by the one who issues the symbols is like saying that electrical energy is created not by the person who causes the dynamo to rotate, but by the person who manufactures it. The usurocratic hegemony of the banking system is based on this misunderstanding.
d) Credit value is caused by the promise of the debtor, as in the case of a bill of exchange, where the issuer is the debtor. Monetary value is caused by the acceptance of the first person to accept it. Nowadays, money is issued as if it were a spurious bill of exchange because the governor of the central bank, signing as if he was the debtor, makes the people believe, incorrectly, that he is the one who creates monetary value.
e) The theories which claim to explain money as an instrument of credit representing the available goods on the market are also incorrect in their attempts to give money a unilateral purchasing power (in this connection, we recall Nixon's statement at Camp David on 15 August 1971 which abolished the dollar's convertibility in gold and revoked the Bretton Woods agreement). Like every other unit of measure, money has only got utility if there are objects to measure. If there were no objects to measure in length, a metre would be as useless as money would be if there were no objects whose value could be measured. But this does not mean that a unit of measure represents the measured objects.
The definitive proof of the insufficiency of this thesis is that, while the bearer of a certificate of credit can ask for the object of credit by presenting the document, the bearer of money can only propose the purchase of goods to the owner (or accept the owner's proposal), offering money as a real good and object of exchange. Furthermore as we have shown above, a "title of credit" is extinguished by the payment whereas money continues to circulate after every transaction because like every unit of measure it is an item of continuous utility.
f) We may conclude that induced value differs from credit value because of the different legal circumstances. Credit arises from the relationship (whether negotiable or not) between creditor and debtor, whereas induced value is caused exclusively by the convention which binds the national community in acceptance of their money. This also explains why monetary units are characterized by nationality.
5) The great usury.
After proving that money is, simultaneously, a measure of value and the value of the measure, it is unquestionably true that the monetary mass constitutes a mirror-like duplicate of the value of real goods, measured or measurable in terms of their value. This duplicate value can have the positive sign of an asset (and in this case, it doubles the people's wealth), or the negative sign of a debt (in which case it creates a desperate and agonising situation because of inevitable insolvency).
When money was made from gold, the bearer was also the owner. Since the advent of "nominal money", he has without realising it become a debtor. All "nominal money" is issued by the banks in the form of loans. Thus, all money in circulation is burdened with debt to the central banks. Therefore, if someone wants to pay off a debt of money with money, it would be the same as paying a debt with another debt. IT CANNOT BE DONE. In the long run, he is forced to pay with his own capital and with the produce of his labour.
With the discovery of induced value as a legal value, it is not only proven that money must be considered as the property of the national community, but, also that currently the central bank, by loaning out what is in fact due, imposes a cost of 200% on money, at the act of issue: the initial 100%, because it expropriates the community of the induced value (only an owner can lend money), and a further 100% by forcing the national community into debt to the same extent.
Furthermore, it is also evident that banks and other credit institutions "create" money in a surreptitious way. Applying the principle of so-called credit multiplication, they lend money in an increased proportion to the sums which have been deposited with them. For example, they lend 100% with a 20% monetary liquidity reserve. All this can be done because a great part of the lent money is deposited in a bank, again, so that a reserve of 20% is usually sufficient to satisfy a request for money. Hence, it is evident that a bank can lend money which it does not have to an amount of 80% of the loan. Consequently, this difference of 80% is, in fact, induced value (not credit value), which should be represented by legal-tender, paper money, not by instruments of credit. Properly considered, its ownership should be attributed to the community (not to the banks), who could then deposit it in a bank as creditors and not as debtors.
This principle of credit multiplication expropriates the people and causes debts to the extent of the induced value as explained above, thus it results in "debt multiplication", which was a consequence and a corollary of the scheme developed by Paterson in 1694 for the Bank of England, founded with the aim of making loans using the "notes of the bank" (i.e. bills of exchange) in place of money (gold). These bank-notes were "nominal money" and also "debt-money".
As a result of these practices, the people of the world have been dispossessed of their own money, forced into debt, without receiving anything in return.
Only in the light of the preceding considerations does it become possible to formulate a correct interpretation of the modern age.
6) Organic society and instrumental subjectivities.
The advent of the constitutional state was not merely a simple, political choice, but also an historical one. The proliferation of "legal phantoms" (so-called "instrumental subjectivities") has taken the place of the old catholic monarchies of the Old Europe, the last descendants of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus, the possibility to plan and change ethical parameters has also been created.
The concept of society was considered as a concept without a human content, i.e. an "instrument", so that making use of it and not "serving it" was the only possibility. We can only make use of an instrument: it is ridiculous to serve an instrument. In this way, a concept of ethics driven by economic considerations developed. The principle "that which is right (just) is advantageous" was replaced by the new principle "that which is advantageous is right".
The concept of a society which exploits the instrumental subjectivities has taken the place of a society based on natural law, i.e. people united by an organic relationship. In this way, national communities have become the "exploited society" and humanity has entered an age of decadence.
"Debt-money" is the instrument which the "exploiters" have used in order to become the real puppet-masters of history.
With this new monetary system, the central bank can at any time lay claim to as much money as it requires in "repayment" because all money has been issued by the bank in the form of loans. Since the bank exercises control over the political authority, or at least the Treasury and hence budgetary and fiscal matters, it can at any time retire all the money it desires from the market by means of fiscal levies (taxation) or interest rates.
The people have really and truly become cows to be milked. This was the aim of the French Revolution, which was strategically planned by the Bank of England. By substituting debt-money (the bank-note) for asset-money (money as property, i.e. gold), the system of the central banks has taken possession of almost double the circulating money of all the world because it has dispossessed and indebted the people without giving anything in return.
By manipulating the conditioned reflex of habitually giving an equivalent to get money, the central banks have forced all the people of the world to accept, at the moment of issue, monetary symbols of negligible cost as the equivalent of a debt. But this is an unfair exchange because the debt is not proportionate to the cost of the symbols (as it should have been), but rather to the induced value of the money (which is not produced by the bank of issue but by social convention).
It is as if someone lending empty fish-baskets to fishermen thereby forced them into debt, not only for fish-baskets but also for fish.
7) Legal nature of the issue and circulation of money.
In this way, the greatest fraud of all time has happened because the central banks have deliberately confused the concept of "issue" with the concept of "transfer". We recall in relation to this point the written replies of the Under-Secretaries of the Italian Treasury, Pace and Vegas, to the questions of the Chamber (Session of 17 March 1995) and the Senate (Written Reply n.38), respectively, which define in writing the issue as the "creation of money and its introduction into circulation by transfer to other subjects".
"Transfer" and "issue" are separate concepts, distinguished by the fact that during the former the object which is transferred, by the transferor, is the same object as that which is received by the creditor. In the case of "monetary issue", the object issued by the central bank is the symbol, i.e. a mere formal element, which is also the basis for the legal matter of money, which is completely different from the one which is in the hands of the acceptor. In this context, the symbol becomes money by virtue of its acceptance.
The so-called "desert-island syndrome" is the definitive proof which demonstrates that the value of money is not created by the bank but by the community: if a bank governor begins to issue money on a desert island, the money will have no value because there is no community. Therefore, we may conclude that the value of money is created not by the one who issues the symbols, but by the one who accepts them.
The issue of symbols in the form of legal tender is an act of heteronomy. The acceptance of money which creates conventional value is an act of autonomy. A serious inequity in the legal system of monetary value has been created by a confusion between the first and the second phase. It has been incorrectly assumed that monetary value, with respect to the original title of ownership, could be created by the issuer (of symbols) and not, as is really the case, by those who accept them as money.
Monetary value arises from a forecast about the behaviour of other people. Everybody accepts money in exchange for goods because he expects to be able to give money in order to receive goods. Every consideration about value is based on a forecast, which anticipates the future moment of satisfaction. This is the reason why, in anticipation of the possibility of purchasing, the initial bearer of the symbols creates a "purchasing power". If a knife possesses value because I foresee cutting, money similarly possesses value because I foresee making purchases.
In this way, a new value is created which acquires objective form in another good, i.e. money. Because of this, the subjective moment of time, which is the mere anticipation of purchasing, is replaced by an objective moment, which is a concrete and real purchasing power (a legal security to purchase with money). This is the legal instrumentality which proves that money, even if it is a good based on a pure legal value, is a real item and an object of property.
Monetary value is created through legal induction by the person who accepts it and not by the person who issues it.
Proceeding from a definition of "issue" as the "creation and transfer" of money, we will tend to erroneously consider the moment of the symbol's creation as being coincident with the creative moment of monetary value. The bank is thus granted the competence to create induced value which by its very nature (as the desert island example proves) can be only created by social convention, i.e. by a national community.
If we assume the birth of this new value at the moment of issue, we incorrectly attribute the ownership of the money, in respect of the original title, to the bank, and not the community (as it really the case). By means of this pretext, the bank speciously justifies treating the acquisition of the derivative title of monetary ownership by the community as the object of a loan. Therefore, the bank issues money with an enormous reversal of accounting principles because it lends out what is in fact due.
This is the natural consequence of two fundamental errors, carefully designed and deliberately misleading:
a) Issuing money as a spurious bill of exchange, a so-called "irredeemable obligation" (e.g. £ 1000 payable at sight to the bearer. Signed the Governor of the Bank of Italy).
b) Defining the issue as the "creation and transfer of money". By signing the spurious "bill of exchange" as a debtor, the governor of the central bank arrogates the power of issuing money to himself, improperly attributing the induced value to himself.
8) Monetary scarcity.
Money, even if it is a legal matter, is distinct from all others because it must possess the essential quality of scarcity. Every unit of measure has got a quality corresponding to that which it is supposed to measure. Since money is the unit of measure of economic goods which are limited in quantity, i.e. they are scarce, money must also exhibit scarcity.
When money was gold, the scarcity of gold could assure the scarcity of money. "Nominal money", which is independent of every form of reserve, imposes the necessity to formulate a scientific law of scarcity. The limit of the quantity of money has hitherto been based on the principle of the "wisdom" of the central bank's governor, a sort of rational and functional autonomy, independent of any political control.
The lack of stability in the value of money which more often than not is determined by speculative aims, has made evident the necessity to rigorously define rational, scientific principles on which a socially useful limit of monetary scarcity can be based.
This limit may be easily deduced from the indications of the market. Since the "market price" is not only an indication of the value of the goods but also of the saturation point of the market, the market is full when prices tend to coincide with production costs. When this happens, it is opportune to desist from an increase in the monetary supply and from the production of goods.
The schools of economics have tried to determine the parameters of monetary increase only in relation to the increase of the gross domestic product, forgetting the human dimension. However, in the market economy the consumer is the person who needs consumer goods and money with which to buy them, so it is imperative to integrate the rights of every human being into a new social law (with patrimonial content) dealing with the monetary question: i.e. a citizens' income. Monetary increases have to be related not only to the gross domestic product, but also to the number of the persons of the national community.
Since money is not only scarce but also of negligible cost, it creates a great gulf between exceedingly rich and desperately poor classes. The great difference between wealth and poverty has been, historically, determined by substituting for commodity money "nominal money" of negligible cost. The central banks, motivated by ethics based on purely economic considerations, have not operated on the principle "it is advantageous to be right (just)"—in which case money should have been accredited to the people—but rather on the principle "it is right to do that which is advantageous". Consequently, money has been issued as a debt to the people.
So the banking system expropriates the national community and forces them into debt by lending what is, in fact, owed to them. This means that at the act of issue, the cost of money is already 200% . This enormous and heavy cost is usury (as explicitly confirmed by Dr. Luigi Donato, co-director of the supervisory board of the Banca d'Italia in reply to a specific question by the author of this article on the occasion of a conference on the subject of usury held at the University of Macerata on Feb. 7 1996).
The legislators have hitherto only concerned themselves with "minor usury". After the discovery of the principle of induced value, it is of the utmost importance to correct this system of "usurocracy" which is wreaking havoc with the economy. It is obvious, indeed, that no productive activity can bear such a heavy cost, and all available evidence demonstrates that this is in fact so.
With the written replies to parliamentary questions (of Senators Patarino and Pasetto, Parliamentary Acts CII Legislature), Under-Secretaries Pace and Vegas declared on behalf of the Italian Treasury that the Bank of Italy is not the owner of money but it is a debtor. This is not enough for us, we now want to know who is the owner.
The first Civil Section of the Court of Rome has fixed 6 December 1996 to deliver its judgement in the case which we have promoted against the Bank of Italy to obtain a judicial ruling in order to confirm that the Italian citizens are the real owners of the national money. A confirmation of this principle will underline the necessity for an alternative proposal with regard to the monetary system.
9) Money as an asset. Practical consequences of the project.
For these reasons we have proposed a new type of money which possesses the positive quality of gold money but not the negative one, and the positive quality of "nominal money", but not the negative one. When we speak about the positive quality of gold money we mean that the bearer is the owner; by the negative quality, we mean that it creates problems because of the extreme scarcity which cannot be easily controlled. The positive quality of "nominal money" consists of the fact that it doesn't create problems of scarcity; the negative quality consists of the fact that it currently exists only as debt-money. Therefore, the formula we propose is "nominal money owned by the citizens", as detailed in Senator Natali's legislative draft (n. 1282, 11 January 1995, Senate's Acts CII Legislature), which concerns "the popular ownership of money" and which states:
Art.1 "At the act of issue, money is the property of all Italian citizens and must be credited to the state by the central bank".
Here, the most important word is "credited" which replaces "debited". In this way, debt-money becomes asset-money.
Art.2 "To every citizen, a code of social income is attributed by means of which the sum of income which has been produced by the monetary issue and by other sources of income can be credited to him".
If the "fiscal code" is used for the purpose of payment, the "code of social incomes" is used to collect money. Since property is an enjoyment protected by law, it is as such the enjoyment of two goods: the good, which is an object of law, and the law, itself satisfies the need of legal certainty. This means that a person is not only the owner of money but he has also the right to claim it. This is possible because money, even if it is a collective good, is a personal private property, being created by social convention, and it is attributed to the bearer, thanks to the induced value, which is incorporated into the symbol.
Since the moment of enjoyment of the value is strictly individual and cannot be delegated, it is not possible to attain it "by proxy". This is why property—which is a legally protected enjoyment of goods—must be attributed to human beings and not to corporate bodies. Otherwise, the pathology of capitalism is created, which has been analyzed by "Centesimus Annus" (n.42) and which consists of the absurd pretension to establish an organic representation for the legal enjoyment of goods. We could say that if people's function is to "be hungry", then the government's function is to "eat on behalf of the people". This is also the essential message of Menenio Agrippa's apologue in the spirit of solid Roman wisdom.
After having confirmed that money is the property of the citizens, it will be possible to make a rational reform of the fiscal system. The State could hold what is necessary for the needs of the whole community, at the act of issue. In this way, taxation is made at the source, avoiding the necessity of spending so much time on banal, routine, book-keeping activities, not to mention prosecutions and tax avoidance.
With the introduction of the citizen's income by means of the code of social incomes, it becomes possible to eliminate the desperate need for money and, hence, usury.
Contractual conflict in working relationships can be minimized. After having strengthened the position of the weaker contracting party, the contract of work, based on respect for the given word, could be revived, because the contract is now voluntarily sought after, and it is no longer determined by a state of severe need. For the same reason, we could expect a decrease in the crimes against property and prostitution.
The loss of national vitality can be eliminated. Young people, because of the severe monetary scarcity caused by debt-money, cannot establish a family because they do not have reasonable possibilities to secure the economic means with which to support it.
Additionally, we cannot keep silent about the enormous waves of emigration and immigration. Money is to man as water is to a fish. During periods of drought, the fish must leave the dry area to seek refuge wherever they find a pool of water. Similarly, the nineteenth-century bankers moved a lot of people from Europe to North of America, contriving a monetary scarcity in Europe and an abundant supply of money in America, with monetary symbols of negligible cost: the paper dollar. Nowadays, the puppet-masters of history move the people of the Third World towards Europe because they have planned the mixture of races and cultures, in an absurd attempt to create a sort of global, human zoo.
The only rational and definitive solution of these problems is to make every people the owner of its own money, so that it may live in peace on its own lands.
10) The "secret" of the great commercial banks.
Only by means of the theory of the induced value is it possible to explain the presence of such great quantities of money on the market. According to the estimates made by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the global amount of exchange and interest rate transactions is US $1200 billion every day.
The heads of the global banking system have understood that monetary value is caused by a convention. The ones who can take part in this convention can be persons, or the legal phantoms of the so-called instrumental subjectivities. (It is not by coincidence that all the banking structures of the world are anonymous societies). Cleverly exploiting these phantoms, the ability has been developed to create or destroy, in a completely arbitrary fashion, enormous quantities of induced value (in the guise of any monetary symbol) by means of agreements between phantoms - i.e. by means of mutual loans.
We are living in a time of great change, where the heads of the banking system are attempting to destroy masses of living people by means of phantoms. Humanity can only survive if it attains the consciousness that it is the owner of the world of values.
The only possibility to eliminate the hegemony of the "great usury", in order to allow humanity to live and enjoy life on a new human dimension, is to inscribe in the legal code of all nations the principle of the popular ownership of money (in accordance with Senator Natali's legislative draft presented to the Italian Parliament, n.1285/95).
We can be certain that if the principle of the "popular ownership of money" is integrated into the Maastricht Treaty, our Continent will be in the forefront of the global economy, living on a new dimension of civilization which is based on a truly human foundation.
Prof. Giacinto Auriti
UNIVERSITA DI TERAMO
Prof. Giacinto Auriti
UNIVERSITÀ DI TERAMO
Date: June 4, 1999:
Money of the Poor - Money of the Jubilee
by
Prof. Giacinto Auriti
PREMISE:
Nowadays, all the peoples of the world are poor because they are in debt of all their money and also more. As a consequence of the old and usual habit of always giving an equivalent in order to get money, the central banks induced all the peoples to accept their money, at the issue's act, with the equivalent of a debt (which shouldn't be due), that is to say on loan. Therefore the nominal money caused the biggest fraud of all time, unnoticed because it is too evident.
This is the reason why, asking for the remittance of the poor nations' debts, as it happens almost everywhere, is like asking the swindler to renounce--for a noble principle--the lucre he obtains, thanks to his crime. It is clear that, in this case, there is no debt, it doesn't exist at all because of the unlawful nature of this case.
The so-called rich peoples flattered themselves to be rich. They realised, indeed, to be poor when the owners of money ask them for the payment of their (not due) debt. [Japan, Russia, and South America experienced this entire situation, bitterly.]
Making every people owners of their money, at the issue's act, means to change people from debtors into owners of their money, according to the teaching of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church: everyone is an owner.
This is the reason why the expression: the money of the poor is the money of the Jubilee, shouldn't be considered surprising or shocking (even if it is provoking).
THE MONEY OF THE POOR
The idea of this project has been generated by the comparison of two different and opposite formulas. They are, respectively, taken into consideration by the Mosaic Law and by the Social Doctrine of the Church: "lend the poor" (Deuteronomy, 15, 8,) - "there is something which is due to a man, because it is of the man" (encyclical "Centesimuas Annus" by Giovanni Paolo II).
According to the Mosaic Law, he who receives has got an obligation as well, since he who borrowed something must give it back.
According the Christian Law, he who gives something, is obliged.
The word "due" implies, necessarily, the juridical pretension of the one who receives something. This is a universal right because it is recognised by every man in himself.
Nowadays, the man is poor because he receives something which is "on loan" to the Mosaic Law and "due" to the Christian Law. This "something" that is on loan (to the Mosaic Law) and "due" (to the Christian one) is money.
Money is, indeed, a measure of value and a value of measure in the same time, since every unit of measure is determined by the corresponding quality of what it can measure. If the metre is characterised by the quality of length because it measures length, money has got the quality of value because it measures value.
Therefore, even if money is a collective good it is also a good of individual private property, that is a good of the bearer, since "the value of the measure" is an induced value (and not a credit one) which is incorporated into the symbol.
The monetary value, which is not created by who issues symbols but by who accepts them, has no cost.
It has no cost because the value is generated by the simple expectation of the other people's behaviour, as a condition for his own behaviour. Everyone is, indeed, willing to accept money against goods, because he expects to give money against goods. This means that money has a value because we conventionally decide that it must have it.
The monetary value is not created by who issues symbols but by who accepts them, that is the parties of the convention. Therefore, money, at the issue's act, must be considered a national collective property and not a central bank one, as it happens today. When money was made out of gold the bearer was the owner. With the nominal money (born in 1694 with the foundation of the bank of England) the bearer has become the debtor, that is "temporary owner" as long as the loan lasts.
In order to understand this fundamental changment, let us examine a simple example. Some times ago, the person who found a golden nugget, embezzled it without any debt with the mine. Today, instead of the mine we have the central bank; instead of the nugget a piece of paper, instead of the property, the debt.
Therefore, the substitution of golden money with nominal money has not been the simple changment of the marketing nature of the symbol, but a deep and substantial juridical innovation: peoples have been surreptitiously transformed from owners to debtors of their money, because the bank issues money only through loans.
The monetary circulation is, therefore, a circulation of real goods of induced value, which are burdened by loans at 100% to the central bank.
The Mosaic Law has come true thanks to the coming of the "debt money." The formula "lend the poor" means that the man has become poor because he "borrowed" something (according to the Mosaic Law) which is "due" (according to the Christian Law).
The consideration that the Christian Law is right is proved by the fact that if a governor of the central bank issues money on a desert isle, there is obviously no monetary value because there isn't a community {which is willing to accept the money, thus giving it value.}Editor's Note.
This example is simple but definitive and unquestionable to prove that, at the issue's act, money must be considered a property of men and not of juridical ghosts: central banks ltd. Co.
Nowadays, all the peoples have become poor because the "property money" has been substituted by the "debt money".
This is the reason why the peoples of the Third Word are, firstly, lacerated by debts and secondly, by hunger. They are illegitimately burdened by this debt when they accept to receive "their" money on loan; money that, at the issue's act, should be "credit" to them because they, themselves, create value, accepting it.
On these premises, the Church of Rome must issue the "money of the poor" in order to set human beings free from the poverty which is wickedly planned by the "big usury".
The church must have no fear to do this, because it makes it according to the spirit of poverty and service. While the central bank issues and lends money following the Mosaic Law, the Church of Rome issues and gives following the Christian Law.
When money was made out of gold, it was not possible to attribute it gratis to the issue because of the high cost of gold. Today, with the symbols of no cost, it is not only possible but dutiful as well, in order to release humanity from the domination of the big usury. We are sure that money, issued by the church, could be really in accordance with the great event of the Jubilee. Moreover, all the religions, which are against usury, will certainly agree, in an essentially ecumenical view.
Lack of uniform rules in statutory and constitutional systems.
Additional proposals for the Treaty of Maastricht.
By Prof. Giacinto Auriti
UNIVERSITÀ DI TERAMO
FACOLTÀ DI GIURISPRUDENZA
Wed., 29 May 1996
1) Preliminary considerations.
What is most surprising not only for a jurist, but more so for the ordinary reader of legislative texts, is to discover that there are no considerations about who is the owner of the money, at the act of issue, to be found in any legal ordinance.
The Treaty of Maastricht is no exception to this rule.
If we do not establish who is the owner of money, with respect to the original title of ownership at the act of issue, we cannot distinguish between debtor and creditor, which illustrates the gravity of a legislative deficiency that can no longer be tolerated. This serious deficiency in the legislative framework surrounding the monetary system has arisen from the fact that there is no scientific definition of the concept of money, itself, and thus it has not been possible to consider it as a real good and an object of the law of ownership.
These are the reasons why money is now considered as an "irrecoverable debt" or a spurious bill of exchange; for example "£ 1000 payable at sight to the bearer. Signed: the Governor of the Bank of Italy".
2) The induced value as a legal value.
For these reasons, it is useful to briefly summarize the new theory of the monetary "induced value", which has recently been developed in the University of Teramo (G.Auriti, "Il valore del diritto" and "L'ordinamento internazionale del sistema monetario" ed. Edigrafitel, Teramo, 1993).
In the light of this theory, it is evident that money is a question of law and, as such, its production is only limited by the decisions of the sovereign fiscal authority, entailing no other cost than that of the symbols (which merely constitute the formal elements of such legal matters). In order to explain the nature and characteristic aspects of legal induction, we need to consider some essential premises of a general, theoretical nature:
a) The law is an instrument because it is the result of a creative activity of the human spirit.
b) Since an instrument is an object of value, we cannot define the law, if we do not first of all define value.
c) Value is a relationship between phases of time. Therefore, I can say, for example, that a pen has value because I anticipate writing with it. Value is a relationship between the moment of anticipation and the anticipated moment.
d) In the first phase, value is the judgement of instrumentality, which concerns the object; in the second phase, it is the moment of satisfaction which concerns the subject. Therefore, the spiritual reality of the law, in which its instrumentality resides, is a relationship between phases of time. Thus for example, credit is the relationship between the "recalled" moment of establishing the contract and the anticipated moment of its fulfilment. In this way, we can state that law is a necessary and functional relationship between phases of time, which constitutes by virtue of its force of obligation a "must" or "shall be".
e) From these preliminary considerations, it emerges that because it satisfies a need for legal certainty, the law possesses a value in itself, which is separate from that of the item which is an object of the law. Therefore, if we consider two mutual actions of donation between two subjects, we have, retrospectively, the equivalent of an exchange contract. But, if the two parties establish a contract instead of two actions of donation, it means that if either one of them performs his service, there is a reason for a legal certainty of the other person's service. So, in the conventional element of the contract, there is a benefit or advantage and, hence, an autonomous value, which is separate from the value of the mutually exchanged services. The difference between "credit value" and "conventional value" becomes clear at this point: the credit value is measured by the value of the object of credit, while the conventional value is created by the convention itself, and its entity and structure are freely conceived and made by the agreement among parties. In this way, a value is created whose sole cost is the mental activity of the parties and the material element, which is necessary for its formal manifestation.
3) Money as a question of law.
Only in the light of these preliminary considerations is it possible to give a scientific definition of money, filling a conceptual void which can no longer be tolerated. Money has value because it measures value. Every unit of measure is determined by the corresponding quality of what it measures. If the metre is characterized by the quality of length, because it measures length, money necessarily has the quality of value, because it measures value. In this particular instance, conventional activity produces not only the measure of value, but also the "value of the measure," i.e. what we call "purchasing power".
In the case of money, we observe a phenomenon which is similar to that of physical induction. In an electrical dynamo, mechanical energy produces electrical energy.
Similarly for money, convention causes the induced value in the symbol. In the case of a dynamo, an increase in the rotational speed of the generating components causes an increase in the quantity of electric energy. Likewise, in the case of money, an increase in the velocity of circulation causes an increase in the induced value, i.e. in the purchasing power.
Money is, therefore, a collective good, because it is created by a social convention, but it is also an item of individual private property because with respect the original title of ownership, it is attributed to the bearer of the symbol by "legal induction".
The obstacle which has invariably confounded economists has arisen from the initial error of not defining money as a question of law and the law, itself, as an instrument and a good in itself, that is, an expression of value in itself, separate from the value of the good, which is an object of the law. On the basis of this initial misunderstanding, it has been attempted to explain monetary value with reference to gold reserves, producing confusion and, incorrectly, substituting the "credit value" for the "induced value", i.e. considering money not as a measure of value and, consequently, the value of the measure (which it is), but as an instrument of credit, representing the reserve. Money is not credit, but by legal induction it is a real good, an asset, and as such can also be an object of credit.
After all, if it were true that the reserve could give money its purchasing power, then the dollar should have lost its value completely, after the end of the Bretton Woods agreement and the abolition of the golden reserve. But the dollar has not lost its value, and has even taken the place of gold as the basic monetary unit of the global, monetary system.
The argument which tries to justify the monetary value in terms of the reserve is seriously flawed because it is based on a materialistic concept of value. Value, as we have explained above, can never be considered as a property of the material, but as a temporal relationship because it always consists of a forecast or anticipation. If a pen has value because we anticipate writing, money, too, has value because we anticipate purchasing. Usually the value of gold is considered as a characteristic of the metal and, consequently, has given rise to the erroneous concept of its "intrinsic value". But like everything else, gold has value because it has been agreed that it shall have it. Since the metal has been traditionally regarded as a monetary symbol, an induced value has been attributed to it by custom.
Since convention is a legal matter, and every unit of measure is established by convention, the raw material to create money is the same material used to define all other legal matters, i.e.: "space and time": in this context, the spatial dimension is the material, with which the monetary symbol appears and the temporal dimension is the anticipation of the possibility to purchase.
Consequently, the formal element of the "legal matter" in the case of money can be gold or any other symbol which involves negligible cost, like paper and ink. Nussbaum has shown that the value of goods, which represent the monetary symbol, is irrelevant (Arthur Nussbaum, Storia del dollaro, Milano, 1957, p.8). Analyzing the monetary history of the American Colonies, he shows that when goods were accepted as money, two phenomena were observed: their value appreciated and goods of inferior quality became as valuable as goods of superior quality. This was observed, for example, in the case of beaver furs.
Therefore, taking on an induced value, goods, as a monetary symbol, played the role of a mere formal element of a legal matter. In order to explain the validity of this thesis, we may consider that it makes no difference to us whether we have got old, or brand-new, banknotes in our pockets. This proves that gold is also nothing more than a legal matter, and its so-called "intrinsic value" is really the "induced value". The definitive proof of this is that if I buy a pound of gold, paying two hundred thousand lire, I give in exchange for the golden symbol two pieces of paper, whose commodity value is a minute fraction of the value of the gold which I have purchased.
By defining the value of money as a legal value, it is as if we had made the discovery of a gold-mine, which can be exploited without cost. "To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads, because there are no kilometres."
Ezra Pound was right !
4) Credit value and monetary value: distinguishing characteristics.
It is now time to clear up the misunderstanding caused by erroneously equating monetary value with credit value. In order to understand the great difference between money and credit, it is sufficient to consider the following points:
a) Credit is extinguished by a payment; money continues to circulate, after every transaction, because it is an item of continuous utility like every unit of measure.
b) Credit value is exposed to the risk of non-fulfilment; the monetary value is real and certain because, due to legal induction, money is a real good and, moreover, an item of continuous utility.
c) In the case of credit, the normative precept is required first and is followed by its manifestation. In the case of money, the formal manifestation of monetary symbols is first created and these symbols are then given value during the act of issue. The one who gives money its value is not the one who issues it, but the one who accepts it. In the case of physical induction, electric energy is generated by the rotation of the dynamo's components. Similarly in the case of legal induction, monetary value is created during the act of issue, that is to say at the dynamic moment when it enters circulation among the members of the community who give it conventional value by accepting it. The issue of symbols in the form of legal tender is an act of "heteronomy"; the acceptance of money which conventionally determines the value is an act of "autonomy". To say that the value of money is not created by the one who accepts it but by the one who issues the symbols is like saying that electrical energy is created not by the person who causes the dynamo to rotate, but by the person who manufactures it. The usurocratic hegemony of the banking system is based on this misunderstanding.
d) Credit value is caused by the promise of the debtor, as in the case of a bill of exchange, where the issuer is the debtor. Monetary value is caused by the acceptance of the first person to accept it. Nowadays, money is issued as if it were a spurious bill of exchange because the governor of the central bank, signing as if he was the debtor, makes the people believe, incorrectly, that he is the one who creates monetary value.
e) The theories which claim to explain money as an instrument of credit representing the available goods on the market are also incorrect in their attempts to give money a unilateral purchasing power (in this connection, we recall Nixon's statement at Camp David on 15 August 1971 which abolished the dollar's convertibility in gold and revoked the Bretton Woods agreement). Like every other unit of measure, money has only got utility if there are objects to measure. If there were no objects to measure in length, a metre would be as useless as money would be if there were no objects whose value could be measured. But this does not mean that a unit of measure represents the measured objects.
The definitive proof of the insufficiency of this thesis is that, while the bearer of a certificate of credit can ask for the object of credit by presenting the document, the bearer of money can only propose the purchase of goods to the owner (or accept the owner's proposal), offering money as a real good and object of exchange. Furthermore as we have shown above, a "title of credit" is extinguished by the payment whereas money continues to circulate after every transaction because like every unit of measure it is an item of continuous utility.
f) We may conclude that induced value differs from credit value because of the different legal circumstances. Credit arises from the relationship (whether negotiable or not) between creditor and debtor, whereas induced value is caused exclusively by the convention which binds the national community in acceptance of their money. This also explains why monetary units are characterized by nationality.
5) The great usury.
After proving that money is, simultaneously, a measure of value and the value of the measure, it is unquestionably true that the monetary mass constitutes a mirror-like duplicate of the value of real goods, measured or measurable in terms of their value. This duplicate value can have the positive sign of an asset (and in this case, it doubles the people's wealth), or the negative sign of a debt (in which case it creates a desperate and agonising situation because of inevitable insolvency).
When money was made from gold, the bearer was also the owner. Since the advent of "nominal money", he has without realising it become a debtor. All "nominal money" is issued by the banks in the form of loans. Thus, all money in circulation is burdened with debt to the central banks. Therefore, if someone wants to pay off a debt of money with money, it would be the same as paying a debt with another debt. IT CANNOT BE DONE. In the long run, he is forced to pay with his own capital and with the produce of his labour.
With the discovery of induced value as a legal value, it is not only proven that money must be considered as the property of the national community, but, also that currently the central bank, by loaning out what is in fact due, imposes a cost of 200% on money, at the act of issue: the initial 100%, because it expropriates the community of the induced value (only an owner can lend money), and a further 100% by forcing the national community into debt to the same extent.
Furthermore, it is also evident that banks and other credit institutions "create" money in a surreptitious way. Applying the principle of so-called credit multiplication, they lend money in an increased proportion to the sums which have been deposited with them. For example, they lend 100% with a 20% monetary liquidity reserve. All this can be done because a great part of the lent money is deposited in a bank, again, so that a reserve of 20% is usually sufficient to satisfy a request for money. Hence, it is evident that a bank can lend money which it does not have to an amount of 80% of the loan. Consequently, this difference of 80% is, in fact, induced value (not credit value), which should be represented by legal-tender, paper money, not by instruments of credit. Properly considered, its ownership should be attributed to the community (not to the banks), who could then deposit it in a bank as creditors and not as debtors.
This principle of credit multiplication expropriates the people and causes debts to the extent of the induced value as explained above, thus it results in "debt multiplication", which was a consequence and a corollary of the scheme developed by Paterson in 1694 for the Bank of England, founded with the aim of making loans using the "notes of the bank" (i.e. bills of exchange) in place of money (gold). These bank-notes were "nominal money" and also "debt-money".
As a result of these practices, the people of the world have been dispossessed of their own money, forced into debt, without receiving anything in return.
Only in the light of the preceding considerations does it become possible to formulate a correct interpretation of the modern age.
6) Organic society and instrumental subjectivities.
The advent of the constitutional state was not merely a simple, political choice, but also an historical one. The proliferation of "legal phantoms" (so-called "instrumental subjectivities") has taken the place of the old catholic monarchies of the Old Europe, the last descendants of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus, the possibility to plan and change ethical parameters has also been created.
The concept of society was considered as a concept without a human content, i.e. an "instrument", so that making use of it and not "serving it" was the only possibility. We can only make use of an instrument: it is ridiculous to serve an instrument. In this way, a concept of ethics driven by economic considerations developed. The principle "that which is right (just) is advantageous" was replaced by the new principle "that which is advantageous is right".
The concept of a society which exploits the instrumental subjectivities has taken the place of a society based on natural law, i.e. people united by an organic relationship. In this way, national communities have become the "exploited society" and humanity has entered an age of decadence.
"Debt-money" is the instrument which the "exploiters" have used in order to become the real puppet-masters of history.
With this new monetary system, the central bank can at any time lay claim to as much money as it requires in "repayment" because all money has been issued by the bank in the form of loans. Since the bank exercises control over the political authority, or at least the Treasury and hence budgetary and fiscal matters, it can at any time retire all the money it desires from the market by means of fiscal levies (taxation) or interest rates.
The people have really and truly become cows to be milked. This was the aim of the French Revolution, which was strategically planned by the Bank of England. By substituting debt-money (the bank-note) for asset-money (money as property, i.e. gold), the system of the central banks has taken possession of almost double the circulating money of all the world because it has dispossessed and indebted the people without giving anything in return.
By manipulating the conditioned reflex of habitually giving an equivalent to get money, the central banks have forced all the people of the world to accept, at the moment of issue, monetary symbols of negligible cost as the equivalent of a debt. But this is an unfair exchange because the debt is not proportionate to the cost of the symbols (as it should have been), but rather to the induced value of the money (which is not produced by the bank of issue but by social convention).
It is as if someone lending empty fish-baskets to fishermen thereby forced them into debt, not only for fish-baskets but also for fish.
7) Legal nature of the issue and circulation of money.
In this way, the greatest fraud of all time has happened because the central banks have deliberately confused the concept of "issue" with the concept of "transfer". We recall in relation to this point the written replies of the Under-Secretaries of the Italian Treasury, Pace and Vegas, to the questions of the Chamber (Session of 17 March 1995) and the Senate (Written Reply n.38), respectively, which define in writing the issue as the "creation of money and its introduction into circulation by transfer to other subjects".
"Transfer" and "issue" are separate concepts, distinguished by the fact that during the former the object which is transferred, by the transferor, is the same object as that which is received by the creditor. In the case of "monetary issue", the object issued by the central bank is the symbol, i.e. a mere formal element, which is also the basis for the legal matter of money, which is completely different from the one which is in the hands of the acceptor. In this context, the symbol becomes money by virtue of its acceptance.
The so-called "desert-island syndrome" is the definitive proof which demonstrates that the value of money is not created by the bank but by the community: if a bank governor begins to issue money on a desert island, the money will have no value because there is no community. Therefore, we may conclude that the value of money is created not by the one who issues the symbols, but by the one who accepts them.
The issue of symbols in the form of legal tender is an act of heteronomy. The acceptance of money which creates conventional value is an act of autonomy. A serious inequity in the legal system of monetary value has been created by a confusion between the first and the second phase. It has been incorrectly assumed that monetary value, with respect to the original title of ownership, could be created by the issuer (of symbols) and not, as is really the case, by those who accept them as money.
Monetary value arises from a forecast about the behaviour of other people. Everybody accepts money in exchange for goods because he expects to be able to give money in order to receive goods. Every consideration about value is based on a forecast, which anticipates the future moment of satisfaction. This is the reason why, in anticipation of the possibility of purchasing, the initial bearer of the symbols creates a "purchasing power". If a knife possesses value because I foresee cutting, money similarly possesses value because I foresee making purchases.
In this way, a new value is created which acquires objective form in another good, i.e. money. Because of this, the subjective moment of time, which is the mere anticipation of purchasing, is replaced by an objective moment, which is a concrete and real purchasing power (a legal security to purchase with money). This is the legal instrumentality which proves that money, even if it is a good based on a pure legal value, is a real item and an object of property.
Monetary value is created through legal induction by the person who accepts it and not by the person who issues it.
Proceeding from a definition of "issue" as the "creation and transfer" of money, we will tend to erroneously consider the moment of the symbol's creation as being coincident with the creative moment of monetary value. The bank is thus granted the competence to create induced value which by its very nature (as the desert island example proves) can be only created by social convention, i.e. by a national community.
If we assume the birth of this new value at the moment of issue, we incorrectly attribute the ownership of the money, in respect of the original title, to the bank, and not the community (as it really the case). By means of this pretext, the bank speciously justifies treating the acquisition of the derivative title of monetary ownership by the community as the object of a loan. Therefore, the bank issues money with an enormous reversal of accounting principles because it lends out what is in fact due.
This is the natural consequence of two fundamental errors, carefully designed and deliberately misleading:
a) Issuing money as a spurious bill of exchange, a so-called "irredeemable obligation" (e.g. £ 1000 payable at sight to the bearer. Signed the Governor of the Bank of Italy).
b) Defining the issue as the "creation and transfer of money". By signing the spurious "bill of exchange" as a debtor, the governor of the central bank arrogates the power of issuing money to himself, improperly attributing the induced value to himself.
8) Monetary scarcity.
Money, even if it is a legal matter, is distinct from all others because it must possess the essential quality of scarcity. Every unit of measure has got a quality corresponding to that which it is supposed to measure. Since money is the unit of measure of economic goods which are limited in quantity, i.e. they are scarce, money must also exhibit scarcity.
When money was gold, the scarcity of gold could assure the scarcity of money. "Nominal money", which is independent of every form of reserve, imposes the necessity to formulate a scientific law of scarcity. The limit of the quantity of money has hitherto been based on the principle of the "wisdom" of the central bank's governor, a sort of rational and functional autonomy, independent of any political control.
The lack of stability in the value of money which more often than not is determined by speculative aims, has made evident the necessity to rigorously define rational, scientific principles on which a socially useful limit of monetary scarcity can be based.
This limit may be easily deduced from the indications of the market. Since the "market price" is not only an indication of the value of the goods but also of the saturation point of the market, the market is full when prices tend to coincide with production costs. When this happens, it is opportune to desist from an increase in the monetary supply and from the production of goods.
The schools of economics have tried to determine the parameters of monetary increase only in relation to the increase of the gross domestic product, forgetting the human dimension. However, in the market economy the consumer is the person who needs consumer goods and money with which to buy them, so it is imperative to integrate the rights of every human being into a new social law (with patrimonial content) dealing with the monetary question: i.e. a citizens' income. Monetary increases have to be related not only to the gross domestic product, but also to the number of the persons of the national community.
Since money is not only scarce but also of negligible cost, it creates a great gulf between exceedingly rich and desperately poor classes. The great difference between wealth and poverty has been, historically, determined by substituting for commodity money "nominal money" of negligible cost. The central banks, motivated by ethics based on purely economic considerations, have not operated on the principle "it is advantageous to be right (just)"—in which case money should have been accredited to the people—but rather on the principle "it is right to do that which is advantageous". Consequently, money has been issued as a debt to the people.
So the banking system expropriates the national community and forces them into debt by lending what is, in fact, owed to them. This means that at the act of issue, the cost of money is already 200% . This enormous and heavy cost is usury (as explicitly confirmed by Dr. Luigi Donato, co-director of the supervisory board of the Banca d'Italia in reply to a specific question by the author of this article on the occasion of a conference on the subject of usury held at the University of Macerata on Feb. 7 1996).
The legislators have hitherto only concerned themselves with "minor usury". After the discovery of the principle of induced value, it is of the utmost importance to correct this system of "usurocracy" which is wreaking havoc with the economy. It is obvious, indeed, that no productive activity can bear such a heavy cost, and all available evidence demonstrates that this is in fact so.
With the written replies to parliamentary questions (of Senators Patarino and Pasetto, Parliamentary Acts CII Legislature), Under-Secretaries Pace and Vegas declared on behalf of the Italian Treasury that the Bank of Italy is not the owner of money but it is a debtor. This is not enough for us, we now want to know who is the owner.
The first Civil Section of the Court of Rome has fixed 6 December 1996 to deliver its judgement in the case which we have promoted against the Bank of Italy to obtain a judicial ruling in order to confirm that the Italian citizens are the real owners of the national money. A confirmation of this principle will underline the necessity for an alternative proposal with regard to the monetary system.
9) Money as an asset. Practical consequences of the project.
For these reasons we have proposed a new type of money which possesses the positive quality of gold money but not the negative one, and the positive quality of "nominal money", but not the negative one. When we speak about the positive quality of gold money we mean that the bearer is the owner; by the negative quality, we mean that it creates problems because of the extreme scarcity which cannot be easily controlled. The positive quality of "nominal money" consists of the fact that it doesn't create problems of scarcity; the negative quality consists of the fact that it currently exists only as debt-money. Therefore, the formula we propose is "nominal money owned by the citizens", as detailed in Senator Natali's legislative draft (n. 1282, 11 January 1995, Senate's Acts CII Legislature), which concerns "the popular ownership of money" and which states:
Art.1 "At the act of issue, money is the property of all Italian citizens and must be credited to the state by the central bank".
Here, the most important word is "credited" which replaces "debited". In this way, debt-money becomes asset-money.
Art.2 "To every citizen, a code of social income is attributed by means of which the sum of income which has been produced by the monetary issue and by other sources of income can be credited to him".
If the "fiscal code" is used for the purpose of payment, the "code of social incomes" is used to collect money. Since property is an enjoyment protected by law, it is as such the enjoyment of two goods: the good, which is an object of law, and the law, itself satisfies the need of legal certainty. This means that a person is not only the owner of money but he has also the right to claim it. This is possible because money, even if it is a collective good, is a personal private property, being created by social convention, and it is attributed to the bearer, thanks to the induced value, which is incorporated into the symbol.
Since the moment of enjoyment of the value is strictly individual and cannot be delegated, it is not possible to attain it "by proxy". This is why property—which is a legally protected enjoyment of goods—must be attributed to human beings and not to corporate bodies. Otherwise, the pathology of capitalism is created, which has been analyzed by "Centesimus Annus" (n.42) and which consists of the absurd pretension to establish an organic representation for the legal enjoyment of goods. We could say that if people's function is to "be hungry", then the government's function is to "eat on behalf of the people". This is also the essential message of Menenio Agrippa's apologue in the spirit of solid Roman wisdom.
After having confirmed that money is the property of the citizens, it will be possible to make a rational reform of the fiscal system. The State could hold what is necessary for the needs of the whole community, at the act of issue. In this way, taxation is made at the source, avoiding the necessity of spending so much time on banal, routine, book-keeping activities, not to mention prosecutions and tax avoidance.
With the introduction of the citizen's income by means of the code of social incomes, it becomes possible to eliminate the desperate need for money and, hence, usury.
Contractual conflict in working relationships can be minimized. After having strengthened the position of the weaker contracting party, the contract of work, based on respect for the given word, could be revived, because the contract is now voluntarily sought after, and it is no longer determined by a state of severe need. For the same reason, we could expect a decrease in the crimes against property and prostitution.
The loss of national vitality can be eliminated. Young people, because of the severe monetary scarcity caused by debt-money, cannot establish a family because they do not have reasonable possibilities to secure the economic means with which to support it.
Additionally, we cannot keep silent about the enormous waves of emigration and immigration. Money is to man as water is to a fish. During periods of drought, the fish must leave the dry area to seek refuge wherever they find a pool of water. Similarly, the nineteenth-century bankers moved a lot of people from Europe to North of America, contriving a monetary scarcity in Europe and an abundant supply of money in America, with monetary symbols of negligible cost: the paper dollar. Nowadays, the puppet-masters of history move the people of the Third World towards Europe because they have planned the mixture of races and cultures, in an absurd attempt to create a sort of global, human zoo.
The only rational and definitive solution of these problems is to make every people the owner of its own money, so that it may live in peace on its own lands.
10) The "secret" of the great commercial banks.
Only by means of the theory of the induced value is it possible to explain the presence of such great quantities of money on the market. According to the estimates made by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the global amount of exchange and interest rate transactions is US $1200 billion every day.
The heads of the global banking system have understood that monetary value is caused by a convention. The ones who can take part in this convention can be persons, or the legal phantoms of the so-called instrumental subjectivities. (It is not by coincidence that all the banking structures of the world are anonymous societies). Cleverly exploiting these phantoms, the ability has been developed to create or destroy, in a completely arbitrary fashion, enormous quantities of induced value (in the guise of any monetary symbol) by means of agreements between phantoms - i.e. by means of mutual loans.
We are living in a time of great change, where the heads of the banking system are attempting to destroy masses of living people by means of phantoms. Humanity can only survive if it attains the consciousness that it is the owner of the world of values.
The only possibility to eliminate the hegemony of the "great usury", in order to allow humanity to live and enjoy life on a new human dimension, is to inscribe in the legal code of all nations the principle of the popular ownership of money (in accordance with Senator Natali's legislative draft presented to the Italian Parliament, n.1285/95).
We can be certain that if the principle of the "popular ownership of money" is integrated into the Maastricht Treaty, our Continent will be in the forefront of the global economy, living on a new dimension of civilization which is based on a truly human foundation.
Prof. Giacinto Auriti
UNIVERSITA DI TERAMO
Prof. Giacinto Auriti
UNIVERSITÀ DI TERAMO
Date: June 4, 1999:
Money of the Poor - Money of the Jubilee
by
Prof. Giacinto Auriti
PREMISE:
Nowadays, all the peoples of the world are poor because they are in debt of all their money and also more. As a consequence of the old and usual habit of always giving an equivalent in order to get money, the central banks induced all the peoples to accept their money, at the issue's act, with the equivalent of a debt (which shouldn't be due), that is to say on loan. Therefore the nominal money caused the biggest fraud of all time, unnoticed because it is too evident.
This is the reason why, asking for the remittance of the poor nations' debts, as it happens almost everywhere, is like asking the swindler to renounce--for a noble principle--the lucre he obtains, thanks to his crime. It is clear that, in this case, there is no debt, it doesn't exist at all because of the unlawful nature of this case.
The so-called rich peoples flattered themselves to be rich. They realised, indeed, to be poor when the owners of money ask them for the payment of their (not due) debt. [Japan, Russia, and South America experienced this entire situation, bitterly.]
Making every people owners of their money, at the issue's act, means to change people from debtors into owners of their money, according to the teaching of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church: everyone is an owner.
This is the reason why the expression: the money of the poor is the money of the Jubilee, shouldn't be considered surprising or shocking (even if it is provoking).
THE MONEY OF THE POOR
The idea of this project has been generated by the comparison of two different and opposite formulas. They are, respectively, taken into consideration by the Mosaic Law and by the Social Doctrine of the Church: "lend the poor" (Deuteronomy, 15, 8,) - "there is something which is due to a man, because it is of the man" (encyclical "Centesimuas Annus" by Giovanni Paolo II).
According to the Mosaic Law, he who receives has got an obligation as well, since he who borrowed something must give it back.
According the Christian Law, he who gives something, is obliged.
The word "due" implies, necessarily, the juridical pretension of the one who receives something. This is a universal right because it is recognised by every man in himself.
Nowadays, the man is poor because he receives something which is "on loan" to the Mosaic Law and "due" to the Christian Law. This "something" that is on loan (to the Mosaic Law) and "due" (to the Christian one) is money.
Money is, indeed, a measure of value and a value of measure in the same time, since every unit of measure is determined by the corresponding quality of what it can measure. If the metre is characterised by the quality of length because it measures length, money has got the quality of value because it measures value.
Therefore, even if money is a collective good it is also a good of individual private property, that is a good of the bearer, since "the value of the measure" is an induced value (and not a credit one) which is incorporated into the symbol.
The monetary value, which is not created by who issues symbols but by who accepts them, has no cost.
It has no cost because the value is generated by the simple expectation of the other people's behaviour, as a condition for his own behaviour. Everyone is, indeed, willing to accept money against goods, because he expects to give money against goods. This means that money has a value because we conventionally decide that it must have it.
The monetary value is not created by who issues symbols but by who accepts them, that is the parties of the convention. Therefore, money, at the issue's act, must be considered a national collective property and not a central bank one, as it happens today. When money was made out of gold the bearer was the owner. With the nominal money (born in 1694 with the foundation of the bank of England) the bearer has become the debtor, that is "temporary owner" as long as the loan lasts.
In order to understand this fundamental changment, let us examine a simple example. Some times ago, the person who found a golden nugget, embezzled it without any debt with the mine. Today, instead of the mine we have the central bank; instead of the nugget a piece of paper, instead of the property, the debt.
Therefore, the substitution of golden money with nominal money has not been the simple changment of the marketing nature of the symbol, but a deep and substantial juridical innovation: peoples have been surreptitiously transformed from owners to debtors of their money, because the bank issues money only through loans.
The monetary circulation is, therefore, a circulation of real goods of induced value, which are burdened by loans at 100% to the central bank.
The Mosaic Law has come true thanks to the coming of the "debt money." The formula "lend the poor" means that the man has become poor because he "borrowed" something (according to the Mosaic Law) which is "due" (according to the Christian Law).
The consideration that the Christian Law is right is proved by the fact that if a governor of the central bank issues money on a desert isle, there is obviously no monetary value because there isn't a community {which is willing to accept the money, thus giving it value.}Editor's Note.
This example is simple but definitive and unquestionable to prove that, at the issue's act, money must be considered a property of men and not of juridical ghosts: central banks ltd. Co.
Nowadays, all the peoples have become poor because the "property money" has been substituted by the "debt money".
This is the reason why the peoples of the Third Word are, firstly, lacerated by debts and secondly, by hunger. They are illegitimately burdened by this debt when they accept to receive "their" money on loan; money that, at the issue's act, should be "credit" to them because they, themselves, create value, accepting it.
On these premises, the Church of Rome must issue the "money of the poor" in order to set human beings free from the poverty which is wickedly planned by the "big usury".
The church must have no fear to do this, because it makes it according to the spirit of poverty and service. While the central bank issues and lends money following the Mosaic Law, the Church of Rome issues and gives following the Christian Law.
When money was made out of gold, it was not possible to attribute it gratis to the issue because of the high cost of gold. Today, with the symbols of no cost, it is not only possible but dutiful as well, in order to release humanity from the domination of the big usury. We are sure that money, issued by the church, could be really in accordance with the great event of the Jubilee. Moreover, all the religions, which are against usury, will certainly agree, in an essentially ecumenical view.
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