Topic: You cannot talk about Money without watching this movies first (Read 5172 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:

Just awesome topic! I am sure there are many people who are faced with the same problems I recently had. I couldn't find Maybe you would be interested in an online service with a ton of Form templates (tax, real estate, legal, business, insurance forms, etc..) I used it to fill out .

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.

I did more than pointing that quotes are not real. I pointed out big "problems" on the way Lincoln is described. As I said to point out everything I would need to write pages and pages, and that is a work I can do if someone is willing to pay for it because it would take me weeks to do properly.

But the fact that the movie quotes some false cites shows how careless they were in the historic part (which is the whole point of the movie).

EDIT: I can recommend you some books about monetary history if you are interested. For example, Rothbard's "History of Money and Banking in the USA: ..." is a good start: http://mises.org/resources/1022

EDIT2: I understand your disconfort about discovering that the movie has a lot of bullshit. I felt the same way. I actually got interested in monetary history because of that movie (and "From Frdedom to Fascism"). But when I started reading more academic books I realized how flawed (and outright lying) that movie was. I was extremely deceived, as I imagine you might feel now.

EDIT3: I just realize you are asking for proves about the quotes not being real. Thats not how it works. You (or the one claiming the quotes) have to prove that they are real. The Jefferson one is easy to disprove because the word deflation was not used back then. The Woodrow Wilson one is false becuse there is basically no evidence that he said it.

Thanks for sharing those details, but how can you prove those quotes were real or not. In which sources do you base your opinion.

But more importantly, discussing this or that quote of a dead president (which neither you nor me can prove), does not add to the central theme of the movie which is to explain how the financial system operates today. Again why dont you share your views on how central banks really work, what is their purpouse, and what misleading concepts about our current financial system you could see in the movie, to get the opinion that it is completely worthless of watching to educate oneselves about money.

I would need to do a whole tesis pointing out the faults of The Money Masters. But I will give you a couple of examples:

1. Several quotes in the movie are false. For example, the Jefferson one about banking institution. Another false one is the Woodrow Wilson cite about regreting the creation of the Fed, there is no record that he said it.

2. The Money Masters paints Lincoln as a anti-banker president that fought against the centrallized control of money. It even insinuates in a very obvious way that Lincoln was killed by the bankers as revenge. But in reality Lincoln passed the National Bank Act when the war was finishing that centralized the credit in the big banks of New York and gave them the power to inflate the money supply and charge interest on it. How can you ignore something as big as this? Because it does not fit in the lie they want to sell about Lincoln being anti-banker.

Central banking is a problem, and I want to close the central banks, but that movie is just wrong.

Then again, could you teach us which are the historical mistakes and which are the wrong and right reasons to criticize central banks?

You give nothing to the comunity by trashing movies without any subtance. We are all here to learn, if you know something we dont know please explain it in detail, you say you studied central banking so why keep the knowledge to yourself.

By the way, for those interested in other opinions: Money Masters Amazon Reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Masters-International-Bankers-Control-America/dp/B0018IPKCG
Seems that this issue is quite polarized: 24 x 5 stars, 4 x 1 stars and nothing in between!

Not only that. The Money Masters has big historical mistakes and is a very misleading film.

I actually got interested about central banking after watching The Money Masters and when I started reading about monetary history I got very deceived since I discovered that The Money Masters is a very misleading movie, with big big historical mistakes.

I would not recomend anyone watching it. The central banks must be criticized for the right reason, not with more lies.

If the CENTRAL BANK lends a private bank $100 and the legally the reserve rate is at 10%=0.1, then, the maximum amount of money created will be 100/0.1=$1000. But anyway that will only happen if private banks lend each other the money infinite times before they spend it or before they lend it to a corporation/company/person. The process will actually stop rather soon.


That's not true, because the process of creating money stops/slows rather quickly. And, in the middle of a crisis, this raletization is true^100.

You want to know how much reserve they really need? Simple! Get a typical mortgage quote. The amount of upfront fees in most cases is exactly what they need as reserve. Typically it would be 1k£ per 100-200k£ mortgage. Considering that mortgagee typically pays the fees upfront they do create everything out of thin air.

It seems to me that you are talking without even having seen the movies! Because of the fractional reserve system, as I understand, if the bank lends me 10 for my house the banking system as a whole can invent 100 or 500 or whathever amount depending the country you live in from that sole lending. So if banks charge 5% for a credit card debth, in reality they are making 50% or more a month. Luckily you get 3% A YEAR if you deposit your money in thouse same banks. If that is not usury then what is. This system is a constant wealth transfer from the common man to the financial sector. If many people pay their debt the whole money supply contracts, until there would be no money left. The system depends on debth, and it will be never stable. It makes the economy dependant on debth so banks can steal. If we owe more, there is more currency available, if we pay debth our economy crashes. There is no way out of slavery. This is ridiculous! I guess you are brainwashed by the mainstream economics lies, as so many people are.  I also gues you will be paying your house mortgage for 30 years and think you did a good business. It seems you live in Spain, so you should learn a bit from the financial problems your country is having right now. You could also see the movies before comenting on them. Also you could learn a bit from Jesus Huerta de Soto, a spaniard too.

Here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXphcuCfzxw&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVrTCLoRrVw&feature=relmfu

And I get tired of people claiming money IS debt. So I just explain that it's not as a precautionary measure.


Because it IS money. It's just not as liquid as the money they lent you.


Well, they created CDOs in order to profit from the fact that they will be saved by the government if/when the scam is discovered. The system is rigged so when banks have any kind of problem, they socialize loses just like they privatized gains.

It's socialism for the rich and wealthy.

29 Minute Animated Film about Money (My Favorite!):

Part 1/2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExBE651_vOY
Part 2/2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx7HDTDDopA

I do get tired of reading, "it does not really work like that" comments.It's supposed to be an introductory movie.

Moreover, in your follow up text you  mention that the bank treats the security you exchanged for the loan also as money! This is the whole way the derivatives bubble was expanded. In other words banks can create far ***more*** money than indicated in the films.

Thus numerous Debt Oligations are fromed into collateralized debt obligations (CDO). You can then further pyramid, ontop of this to make a CDO "Squared". Now the total liabilites in the system are many many times the value of *any underlying asset*....but the biggest joke is that the banks and possibly your pension fund view these pyramid debt bubbles as more "assets"...lol!

A great document to read, which comes from the source is "Modern Money Mechanics"....published by the *Chicago Federal reserve*. Also for a more detailed breakdown of how the banks operate in London/UK go to positivemoney.org.uk

The videos posted are a great introduction to our debt based monetary system.

Uh-huh.  And, then what happens instead if they lend money to buy a dot-com company, or an insurance derivative, or a house that goes down in value?

Imagine a bank lends you some X money to buy your house/car whatever. Before that, the bank had $X in their account, and you had $0 in yours. When they lend you the money, they still have that money, so they are creating that same money that they are lending you. Now they have $X in their account and you have $X in yours.

¿How is that possible? It's simple, when they lend you $X you sign a document saying that you will return that money (with interest, but that's not important right now) and you support that claim with facts, that document becomes a bank guarantee and its tantamount to those $X, and that's why they still have $X in their account. For example, you could support the claim that you will return that money because otherwise they will sell your mothers house/car. In that case (which is very common in Spain btw), they still have those $X in their account because with that they just introduced your mother's house into economy.

I could go into more detail, but, for now, it's enough to demonstrate the kind of false statements you can find in some of those movies.

Of course this system is all but perfect, but don't try to crictizise a system without know how actually works. For example, what happened with the housing bubble was that those bank guarantees were not so sound (you mother's house was worth less than what the bank estimated -and they knew it-).

Hmmm.. could you elaborate? Maybe explain to us how currencies are created instead?

MONEY AS DEBT is a misleading movie that contains mayor errors while speaking the monetary system. Money is not debt, and money is never created only out of debt.

Haha, do you mean unless you are mccheese?   On a seriuos side, I wrote a somewhat provocative subject to help draw attention, because I really think this movies are important to watch. I feel there is a strong bias to the computer/tech area in the Bitcoin community (I am also a geek myself), but I think it is important for everyone to learn also the more social/human monetary stuff, which in fact is so much easier to understand than the technical side. The mostly very intelligent people that come to this forum dosent need to be in disadvantage in the monetary/economic knowledge realm. We have the ability to excel there too if we educate ourselves in this matters.

Regards!  

Great vids.  Really helps you understand why Bitcoin is such a threat to the system we have today.

You cannot talk about Money unless you are me!

Hi,

I have seen quite a few comments here from people giving opinions about money and currencies in general without any clue on what they are, and how the current system works. To avoid the mistakes of the future, we should learn from history.

Here I post a couple of movies I strongly encourage you to see, to understand how money was born in the past, and how it is created today. If you dont know about this matters, this will change the way you see the world.

Plus you will be able to understand the fundamentals about why Bitcoin is such a powerful concept.

MONEY AS DEBTH
Excelent animated movie explaining the origin of money and the current system where the banks create money out of nothing but debt.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC720Cl3N-0&feature=fvwrel

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUChuUo0ZhY&feature=related

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg5N_QSoojw&feature=related

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjbnqeQKEnM&feature=related

Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czZiPkcpL5Q&feature=related


THE MONEY MASTERS- How International Bankers Gained Control of America
Outstanding content of this low budget movie. Its more than 3 hrs in lenght, but it is the best movie I have seen on the subject.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936#


GOLD SILVER DVD
Mike Maloney tries to sell you silver, but his movie is extremly well produced and informative of the way the current monetary system will suffer in the near term, and how sound money can be the key to survive and thrive during the coming times. Of course Mike did not know about Bitcoin when the movie was produced,  but you can apply many of the same concepts of the movie by substituting gold or silver with bitcoins. This movie will also give you a solid historic perspective on sound money.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMwDynuruN4&feature=channel_video_title

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATtxcjM68_A

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYD-ocYju70

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKR5dN35vPM

Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm2O_Psh_ag

Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2uxUijQNhg

Part 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37OBLMHCbLE

Part 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szv2WSDn98w

Part 9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAAIwef3dOg

Part 10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_8lVKHBJc

Part 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL8SbSpucDY

Part 12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZEa5MJdrHU