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He "advocated a decentralized but nationally regulated monetary system based on non-usurious, low-interest public loans to individuals. His vision inspired 19th-century mutualists, greenbackers, populists, and others who sought to restructure the monetary system to redistribute wealth."
He proposed a public credit model with local public banks replacing private monopoly control, charging what the market will bear, and profiting hugely at borrowers' expense.
"Once lent out....public credit notes would flow into circulation, providing the basis for a new currency backed by the assets of individual borrowers....A centralized national currency would be replaced....by a locally issued currency....subject to common national standards, ensuring that each local public credit bank reliably issued equivalent units of currency."
For Kellogg, every dollar would have the same value nationally and would be freely interchangeable with all others. His goal was publicly controlled economic decentralization, and to maintain a stable currency, he said rates must be fixed by law, if necessary by a constitutional amendment.
Australian economist Steve Keen believes financial reform is essential, but his "analysis of how credit is created (makes him) skeptical that any new system will 'hold' so long as financiers can make money by financing asset-price speculation. (He thinks history shows) that every system we've tried so far has finally succumbed to a debt-financed asset-price bubble, whose bursting has brought in at best a recession and at worst a Depression."
He worries as well about publicly created credit so long as "money can still be used to speculate on asset prices." He proposes measures to curb it and suggests ideas of his own. For Brown and others, it's to use public credit for productive industrial development, and as long as new money produces goods and services, it'll work inflation-free.
It's why late 17th-early 18th century colonial America thrived inflation-free for over 25 years, beginning after Massachusetts (in 1691) issued its own paper money (called scrip) and other colonies followed.
Lincoln was also successful after he refused to pay bankers up to 36% interest and got Congress to pass the 1862 Legal Tender Act, empowering the Treasury to issue "greenbacks," public money. Without paying interest to bankers, his achievements were remarkable. Besides building the world's largest army and defeating the South, he turned the country into an industrial giant, launched the steel industry, the continental railroad system, and a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools. He also established free higher education and much more.
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