Topic: You cannot talk about Money without watching this movies first (Read 5162 times)

Great documentaries, saw them all.. The first of the "Zeitgeist" documentaries has these topics covered also. Did my thesis on this subject as well
When you see how the monetary sistem is build, you see the true value of Bitcoin.

Or, as Henry Ford put it:

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very informative videos, thanks

Thanks man!

The thing is that you have several historic examples (Scotland, Canada, USA, ...) were there was free banking, taht means no central bank and no centalised credit regulations, and fractional reserve banks behaved. They were really afraid of bankruptcy, and actually there were very few bankruptcies. Check this out: http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=774

I've watched "Money as debt" (and "Money as debt II"), but I think it's a bit misleading:

It says that money for a loan is created out of thin air, and backed only by the borrower's promise to pay (of course, the house/car/whatever he was buying can be repossessed by the bank if the borrower doesn't pay).

But from my understanding, in a fractional reserve system, money for a loan still comes from lenders (people who make deposits). The bank has to keep a small amount of the lenders' money in reserve (10% maybe), to be able to pay lenders who withdraw some money.
Now, the same money can be lent multiple times: money deposited by person A, lent to person B, who buys something from person C can be deposited (again) by person C, and then lent (again), etc.
So you end up with money multiplication.

Granted, the end result is nearly as bad as with money created out of thin air, in terms of inflation, but still, it seems like an important distinction to me.

Actually, The Secret of Oz is even worse than The Money Masters.

The risk of going bankrupt? What risk? In what idealised world? C'mon we all payed for banks not to go bankrupt. We cannot expect banks to "hold back" for fear of bankrupcy when they have no reasons to fear it.

for so called libertarians you guys sure do seem to forget the principle of contracts between consenting adults being perfectly fine as soon as the topic of money comes up.

A bank guarantee is not a CDO. You can have a bank guarantee without creating a CDO (in fact you need many bank guarantees to create a CDO, because a CDO is a type of structured asset-backed security).

Findeton, your logic is astounding,

First you argue correctly, that a security that is exchanged for debt money is itself treated as money by the banks, then you say its not debt?

How is a Collaterilzed DEBT olbigation not debt? of for that matter a CDO^2?!

Also have you even read "Modern Money Mechanics" published by the US Fed? I suggest you do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Bank_of_Chicago

The films contain some problems, but in a nutshell the money expansion is *far worse* than outlined in the films. The films are worth watching. The is also an updated version of Money Masters, called "The Secret of Oz", in which the producer Bill Still acknowledges and corrects some of the errors made in the first film.

As I told you this would require a discussion on basic economic theory that could take pages to write. All I can do is give you a brief peak at parts that are wrong on the movie, as I already did, and point you aout to books with satisfactory economic theory and history.

Hey, i dont say you are wrong, only to teach us what is the (hidden) agenda of the movie in your opinion. If it tries to manipulate us into believing someting, please spell out what that is. I mean something of subtance, related to economic matters, not related to gossip about what a dead president said or not. I would really appreciate your macro view on this subject.

Hugop, as I wrote I am not claiming 100% accuracy of the things I watch or I recommend. But if they can help open our minds, question authority, think for ourselves, and gain a better undertanding of reality, then its worthwile the time.

My conclusions about the monetary system so far come from taking into account not only the financial sector but the whole society. There were so many odd things in the world that I couldnt explain before, and that now look so obvious. Seemingly unrelated things like the direction of ecology, agriculture, medicine, education, media, social values, globalization, wars, the strange supression of progress in so many aspects of technology and society in the last 50 years, and so on. I mean there are common transversal patterns that you can see everywhere that are easy to explain when you start to understand the level of concentration of power in the world, but difficult of impossible to explain using a bottom up approach. Many, I would say too many things in our society are configured top down, by people who dont share 99% of the population values. And there is a tremendous supression of knowledge to keep this world order. Later we give the status quo some false meanings, beacuse we ignore the process of creation. So trusing authorities, whether Austrian School or Keynesianism by itself is not enough. Our model of reality will be always incomplete, but the more diverse information we are exposed to, the closer we get to the truth. In that respect, I feel the movies I shared are far, far closer to reality than many "academic texts", because they explain a broader range of phonemena and they mesh well with other aspects of the way our society is configured.

I belive in an enormous human potential, that I see supressed by the system. Lets work to unleash all the power we have as human species. I think Bitcoin is a cool step in that direction.

Btw, Peter Schiff follows the austrian school of economics of which Murray Rothbard is one of the big figures and that contradicts a lot of the things that The Money Masters says.


Its ok. You dont have to believe me. Its good policy to not believe anything anyone says on the internet. But if you keep reading and researching about monetary theory and history you will realize how many lies there are in the movie and how it manipulates to sell their talking points, as it happened to me.

We agree on that, Peter Shiff explained it lately. It seems strange though, but NIA seems to have a shady side.

By the way, I dont agree 100% with the movies, not by a long shot, in particular with the solutions they propose in the end, but I find them informative and a fresh perspective to consider.

So you feel its ok that The Money Masters lies about Lincoln?

Btw, I usually agree with the videos of NIA, but behind NIA there is a scammer. Watch out for that.

Murray Rothbard is considered the father of the modern libertarian movement. Just check him out before talking about sheep and obbey authorities and more stuff.

Hugolp, thanks for caring, but I dont feel extremely deceived after reading your solid and profound arguments about the inner workings of our current monetary system, thanks.  

One point though, if you use so called "academic books" as a measuring stick for "the truth", especially in economics, you will have a rude awakening in the coming years. If you are interested in how independent the "prestigious" economic professors of the top universities are, those who write themost influencial papers, I recommend you watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZtX32sKVE. You will learn that many of them are just paid puppets of the financial sector.

On the other hand, if you want to be a good sheep and obbey what authorities teach you without thinking for yourself, go ahead, you will feel more comfortable living that way, no question about it. I rather learn from different sources and think for myself, not giving anyone the authority to say whats true or whats false.

Thanks for the books, I will take a look.

I agree with what you are saying in general about the system creating excessive debt and it being a form of slavery. But the excessive debt is not created by fractional reserve banking alone. Only when you put a central bank behind the fractional reserve system it becomes inflationary, as the central bank is taking the risk away and allowing the banks to inflate. But fractional banking alone is not inflationary, since the risk of going bankrupt keeps the temptaion of credit expansion in check. There are several historic examples of how fractional banking alone is not inflationary.

Yeah! The increasing creation of new money by new debt can stop when it reaches an inflection point, but millions of people keep in slavery paying interest on debt already issued! The point is that societies cannot payback debth without contracting the money supply and harming or destroying the economy. This is perverse! With so much leverage caused by the fractional reserve banking even proportionally few people in a society paying back debth and living debth free can literally destroy the whole economy.

Add to this crime the fact that the level of debth is also controlled by the same sociopaths using their central banks by setting the interest rates in a central planing fashion the way communist economies work. Lower the interest rate and increase the money supply. Increase the interest rate and lower the money supply. So with this trick in place, bankers can crash economies at will.

When economies go south, banks get all those houses, cars, furniture, land, that was put as collateral by people getting those debths. What did the banks give in exchange for this tangible wealth? Money out of thin air!

They can buy all for pennies on the dollar when the purchasing power of the rest of the population is worthless due to the contracion of the money supply that they themselves caused.

Lets see this at is is: the current banking system is a parasite leeching money and life energy from the productive population at large, producing wars, controlling media, and concentrating enormous amounts of power that strongly influences the direction in which society develops in their own interest.